


No Children

by The Stephanois (ballantine)



Series: Love in a Vacuum [1]
Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Angst, Canon Disabled Character, M/M, Unhappiness, domestic strife, grief and guilt about disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-13 16:35:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2157618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/The%20Stephanois
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Charles had once told him that they made people uncomfortable.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>“Because they can tell we're different?” Erik had asked, the thought of being discovered ever-present in his mind.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Charles had stared at him. “No, Erik, because they can tell we're unhappy.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>A Modern AU in which Erik and Charles never met another mutant before or since each other. They fell in love, started a life... and then life just kept happening. As it does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Emotional inspiration and namesake: [ No Children ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRP6egIEABk) by The Mountain Goats. 
> 
> If that's not warning enough: this is a pretty unhappy little fic. I'm hoping it ends on an up-note, 'cause I'm really rooting for these two crazy kids, but y'know. No promises.

Moira and Sean throw a dinner party on Friday and make the mistake of inviting them. It is a decision pretty much everyone, Erik and Charles included, would come to regret.

Sometimes it was hard having such loyal friends.

“Do try to actually speak at this one,” Charles says as he descends in the chair lift.

Erik circles round the car and waits somewhat impatiently for the lift to return inside before closing and locking the doors. He looks briefly down at Charles, whose eyes are unreadable in the darkening evening, and then up again at the warmly lit house in front of them. What an ordeal.

“Try not to drink all their wine this time,” is all he says in return. They begin to make their way up the front walk.

Charles grits his teeth. “I'm serious, Erik. There's really only so many hearty inquiries about my health I can put up with before it starts to grate. Only seems fair if you field some of them.”

“I'm sure they have more interesting topics to discuss than your health, Charles,” Erik says, though admittedly not with much faith. Their friends' conversational skills had grown amazingly dull since the accident.

They come to the front steps of the house and pause.

Charles sighs. “I forgot, the ramp's 'round the back – no, Erik, _don't –_ ”

But Erik has already curled a finger and guided the chair up over the small rise. Charles glares at him; Erik raises an eyebrow and shrugs. “What? No one was looking.”

Then he rings the doorbell before Charles can bite out one of his well-worn dictums on the wisdom of never using their powers in public.

–

Erik didn't speak much after the accident. Those were busy days. He visited Charles in the hospital, held his hand while he was sleeping, made sure all the paperwork and insurance were in order, talked to doctors, physical therapists, _actual_ therapists – the lot of them.

And he prepared the house for Charles’s return.

“Are you going for wheelchair-accessible or just wholesale destruction?” Raven asked doubtfully as she looked around the wreckage of the first floor one afternoon. It had been over a month since the accident and she was finally able to say the word _wheelchair_ without her voice breaking or hesitating.

Erik looked around; she was exaggerating about the wholesale destruction of course. The stairs, after all, were still in place. If he looked close enough at the runner, he could see the slightly more worn spot on the third step where Charles always sat to put on his shoes.

He looked back at the last stretch of intact kitchen counter; the rest of it had already been taken out in preparation for lowering everything six inches. The remaining section sat right below the window with a view of the back garden.

The first year Charles planted the garden he always liked to languorously fuck with one of them bent over this exact spot so he could look out over the sunshine and quiet growing green as he came. In later years he’d taken to sitting up on the counter, back warming in the morning light, stretching his legs out to catch Erik as he was passing and tug him in for a long kiss.

With his eyes closed and his hands flat on the cool steel, Erik could almost feel the clever fingers curling around his hips, the hook of an errant ankle around the back of his thigh. He opened his eyes; the feeling vanished and he was left with an empty countertop and a view of a garden overrun by weeds. Charles hadn't gotten around to planting this year's yet. He'd be disappointed when he realized he'd missed the date for starting the tomatoes from seed.

“You know,” Raven said hesitantly from behind him. “It might be easier — and cheaper — if you guys just moved. I know of a great little bungalow out on Wilson — ”

“We’re not moving,” Erik said. He wanted her to leave so he could stop pretending to use the hammer and get some proper work done. He looked again down at the countertop, down at the hazy impression of his face in the burnished steel.

He couldn't wait to rip the damn thing out.

–

It is immediately and crushingly apparent just how out of practice they have become at socializing.

Even before the accident, their attendance at dinner parties had shrunk in recent years, both the ones they hosted (which were none) and the ones they were invited to (very few, mostly Moira's). Charles had once told him flatly that they made people uncomfortable.

“Because they can tell we're different?” Erik had asked, the thought of being discovered ever-present in his mind.

Charles had stared at him. “No, Erik, because they can tell we're _unhappy_.”

The very last dinner party they'd attended before this one had been one of Raven's, several months back in the fall. They'd arrived tense and silent and within ten minutes Raven was dragging Erik into the hallway to demand to know why he had let Charles drink before coming.

Erik didn't know how to explain to her how impossible a feat that would have been, that conversation, how each squirreled-away bottle that was discovered had two on deck somewhere, and oh, the way Charles would cling tighter to a bottle out of pure spite as their voices, dry with disuse, shook off the dust and rose to a burning fever pitch of _hate_ – he didn't know how to begin to explain any of that, so he said nothing.

Their days were filled with silences now, echoing inside Erik's head and across the breakfast table. Somehow every moment of silence built upon the last, brick-by-brick blocking from view the thousands of conversations they'd had before. Erik couldn't remember the last time he'd heard Charles laugh.

And, as Charles had once pointed out, other people seemed to know it.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“So Charles,” Sean says after a polite but very brief smile at Erik. “How is everything?”

They are all in the living room, supposedly mingling while the final touches are put on the dinner. Erik holds his perspiring beer in a loose grasp and tries to appear interested in the conversation. He hates small talk.

“Everything's going quite well,” Charles says. Erik holds his breath. “And yourself?”

“Good, good.” Sean nods for a few seconds too long. “Going hang-gliding in a week if the weather's good for it, trying to get Moira along, but you know how she is – that is,” Sean comes to an awkward stop, like he just remembered he wasn't supposed to say anything that might remind Charles of his disability, like Charles could ever possibly forget. “I don't mean to. Uh.”

Erik takes one look at Charles's increasingly fixed smile and says to Sean in a very pleasant tone, “You know, Sean, perhaps you could teach me? I've always wanted to learn, and you know I don't mind heights.”

“O-oh?” Sean pales slightly. And then they were surely all were thinking about the same memory: rock-climbing three years ago when Erik jokingly pushed Sean off a cliff.

(“It was a very small cliff,” Erik laughingly protests later in the parking lot as Charles pushes him back against the solid bulk of the Catalina.

“You're completely insane,” Charles says but kisses him soundly all the same.)

All three of them thinking about the cliff was a moment of mental alignment that Erik thinks Charles has to appreciate the beauty of at least a little. If he was listening in, that is. He rarely did anymore.

Sean nods again, casually taking a step back, “You know, we'll see, I'll look into my schedule – but you'll have to excuse me right now, I'm being a terrible husband. Probably should check on Moira in the kitchen –”

He hurries off, and Erik feels rather pleased with himself.

“Rather pleased with yourself, aren't you,” Charles says dryly. He takes a sip from his wine glass. “It wasn't a big deal, there was no need to go bringing up traumatic memories.”

“You said you wanted me to speak, Charles. I spoke.”

“You need to work on your delivery, perhaps sound a little less like a psychopath.” Charles glances up at him from beneath his eyelashes, quick, too quick, “But thank you all the same.”

\---

Erik's proudest possession, the one love of his life that he'd had even longer than he'd had Charles or even really his mutation, was his 1968 Pontiac Catalina coupe.

The car had been his father's, and some of Erik's earliest memories were of riding around in the sloping backseat, feeling the power underneath him, hearing the roar of the engine, and watching the back of his parent's heads as they went for a drive in the countryside.

The car had sat in a storage unit for 15 years before the lawyers finally tracked Erik down during his angry drifter period. They handed him the keys and gave him a home on wheels. Every inch of that car was sensed and known.

He'd had it painted a dark purple, a color that Charles had spent no short amount of time groaning over – _so odd, too obvious, Erik, where's your sense of taste, what happened to it?_ And Erik would never say it aloud but sometimes he'd hoped Charles could hear him think it, hard and fast in his head every time: _I used it all up on you._

–--

When they are all seated, it is side-by-side in that typical style of couple units facing off. It is all carefully arranged, Raven&Hank next to Angel&Armando across from Emma&Janos. There is one critical departure from the norm; instead of Moira and Sean bookending the table with relentless cheer, they have graciously given Charles one end. Presumably they thought he would find it easier to maneuver, and they weren't wrong, it's just that Erik could see it turning ugly. Charles could drink too much, start _wielding_ the position and try to preside over the rest of them like a disappointed head-of-household.

Erik gives a moment to consider the idea of Charles and he raising children and internally shudders. At least they'd gotten that part right.

“You know, Charles,” Janos says once the clattering of plates and silverware and appreciative murmurs over the food have died down. The man is leaning forward to peer down the length of the table, a genial look on his face. “I was reading _Wired_ the other day and I came across a really fascinating article on the new wheelchair technology. They say the controls respond to your thoughts, practically no buttons or toggles required.” Janos looks around with a smile, encouraging agreement. Everyone smiles back, though Moira's is slightly distressed and Raven's edging towards a grimace. “Amazing, what people are coming up with, isn't it? Imagine, a telepathic chair!”

Erik twitches. Charles smiles thinly and reaches for his wine glass.

\---

There's no use, no use at all, in thinking back on the day of the crash. The facts are simple enough: they argued, Charles drove off. In the aftermath Erik was left with the haunting but pointless what-ifs.

What if Erik had stopped him, or at least gone with him? He could have stopped the crash, halted the vehicles – or, if he couldn't do that in time, he could made them angle differently, made the car turn over just that little bit more so they both went down together. Even in his blackest moods Erik didn't want to die, but he'd burn the world down before he let Charles go. And so they were stuck.

What if Charles hadn't taken the Catalina – because of _course_ he took it in the heat of the argument – what if he'd been driving a more modern car instead of Erik's stupid fucking steel trap, which was only really safe when Erik was around?

Erik had asked, that evening when Charles was still in critical condition and unconscious. He'd cornered the doctor and asked him, _if he'd been in a different car, if there'd been airbags and crumple zones and that whole mess of glittering computer sensors, if-if-IF –_

And the doctor had taken one long wary look at Erik's face, stepped carefully back, and would only say, _there's no way of knowing, I'm sorry._

So Erik should have gone with him.

Hadn't they learned that lesson, over and over, that they were better off together in this alien world?

Even in the ugliest moments of their relationship Erik didn't want to leave Charles. Charles knew that, he must, but even he was never brave enough to state the simple truth in response:

_Maybe that's the problem._


	3. Chapter 3

They make it through the salad and appetizer.

Erik's used to playing the silent partner at social events, Charles usually being plenty eager to carry on in conversation with the others. They were more his friends anyway, Erik always reasoned – an opinion that in recent years has started to needle Charles.

Tonight Erik has no desire to talk through the intricate and mind-numbing details of the assorted goings-on around the table, but on the other hand he told Charles he'd contribute to the conversation.

So he makes an effort.

“I'm always curious, Erik, about where you draw inspiration for your sculptures,” Moira asks after a few minutes of gallery shoptalk with Raven. “The one you had up at the University last month was so powerful, so _raw._ ”

Erik doesn't like talking about his sculpting. Either a question approaches dangerous territory, that is, the "techniques" he uses to shape the metal, or they're about his artistic intentions, a topic he finds faintly embarrassing.

But tonight he's making an effort, so what he comes up with is, “Devastating loneliness, mostly.”

He uses a joking tone, but judging from the uncertain looks from half the table, he guesses he wasn't too successful.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Charles flinch.

–--

Erik wonders if Charles still listened in on his thoughts, if he could be bothered, if he still found interest in the same old tread of his mind, the same old passions and irritations that ruled his life.

Was Erik's mind like that stretch of lawn by the peace fountain in the park, where Charles had always loved to sit and read or doze in the sun, where they used to play chess for hours, fingers purposefully hovering over well-worn pieces to prolong the afternoon? Where Charles still went to sit on his breaks between classes?

Or was his mind perhaps more like the cafe down on the corner of 2nd Street, where the two of them used to get brunch but over the years had grown tired of the dishes and ambiance. Every visit only a slight variation on a blasé theme, formerly endearing but now tiresome and predictable. Is that, perhaps, what his mind is like?

If Charles still listened, did he ever hear Erik in the early morning, those hours when he lies staring up at the ceiling and trying to count the reasons to stay?

Did he know, still, the looming fears that press in from the world outside, a world full of people strange and strangely lifeless? Did Charles understand that when Erik gives metallic life to the lonesomeness he feels pressing in from that alien world, it is only Charles that gives him the strength to do so?

Did he have an answer for the question that Erik himself kept asking: no man can be an island, but can two?

–--

Hank, in a well-intentioned but clumsy attempt to change the subject, decides to announce some exciting news.

“We have some exciting news,” he says, reaching around to cup Raven's shoulder and smiling somewhat nervously at everyone. Raven clearly realizes what he's going to say but looks hesitant, glancing down the table at Charles, who is draining his glass and frowning.

“I'm not sure – ” she begins, but Hank, in typical Hank fashion, panics at her deviation from the script and rushes forward in manic awkwardness.

“Nonsense, they'll all be thrilled. It's great news – we're, uh, well – we've decided to try for a baby.”

Not even a beat of silence occurs before warm excitement issues forth from the other couple units. Moira and Angel give sighs of well-fabricated envy; Emma awards a cool but attentive smile. Both Sean and Armando lean around to pound Hank on the back, the twin force of which sends him bumping into the table.

“So you're not going back to school, then?” Charles cuts through the congratulatory choir with the kind of decisiveness that comes from four glasses of wine and bathroom flask break. Silence falls; Raven's nascent smile fades.

“I haven't decided anything yet.” She fidgets, embarrassment mixing with annoyance on her face. “It's not like I couldn't still; plenty of women manage school part-time while starting a family.”

“But you don't really think that's for you,” Charles continues as if she hadn't spoken. Erik looks over at him sharply, familiar with that tone of voice and the responding look of surprise and dismay on Raven's face. Charles was plucking the thoughts from her head and airing them for everyone to see. It didn't matter that they didn't know he was a telepath; everyone knew he was highly perceptive and more than likely correct. “You don't think you're good enough for that.”

Erik has always liked Raven the most out of all their friends. More importantly, he knows Charles _loves_ her. The two of them have known each other since they were children, and Charles hates upsetting her. And Erik hates Charles feeling guilty.

He leans forward, murmuring, “Charles, maybe now's not the time to get into this.”

Charles's face twists. “Erik, don't pretend to care; you're not very good at it.”

–--

So Charles _didn't_ listen in on his thoughts, apparently.

–--

Charles is silent and slow-blinking on the drive home, too drunk to do anything but shake his head and look miserable.

As Erik squares away the car and locks the gate behind them, he tracks the uneven movements of Charles's wheelchair in the back of his mind – the inexorable drift to the left, a hitching correction every few feet, the clip of the footrest against the much-abused corner deck panel.

Erik takes a moment to stand outside in the darkened front lawn, eyes open and fixed on the road just beyond the gate. Could it be that simple, just walk out onto the lane, close the gate behind him, and never come back?

He could feel the wheelchair inside the house both speed up and move more erratically, and he didn't think before turning around and hurrying inside after it.

He finds him in the first floor bathroom, awkwardly poured out onto the floor and clutching the porcelain bowl. His wheelchair sits a couple feet away, cock-eyed and abandoned from when Charles had made his desperate bid for the toilet.

Erik leans his forehead against the doorframe. He does not enter the room. Once he would have – once, he would have helped him up to lean against Erik's chest and Erik would have smoothed his hair back and cracked a joke about what a lousy lush Charles was.

Now, he turns away and retreats to the bedroom. As he walks down the dark hallway, the empty wheelchair lingers in his senses like the afterimage in a camera flash: a distracting impression in negative, visible to eyes both open and closed until finally it fades and is gone.


	4. Chapter 4

The next day is Sunday, and Erik spends the morning in the yard, hurling metal around in a half-hearted attempt at work. He can tell early on that nothing's going to get done today, but keeps at it for the next couple of hours anyway. It's not like he has anything else to do.

He gets careless in his black mood, stops limiting his movements to the corner of the yard blocked from view of the road.

He's spinning a long length of corrugated tin idly in the air when he happens to glance over and see the bicyclist roll off the road and onto the grass, mouth hanging open as he watches Erik.

The sheet of metal drops to the ground instantly, but the damage is done. The man glances from the metal to Erik, and cold dread steals over Erik. He thinks of Charles in the house, but then he spies the look on the man's face, and everything sort of goes grey and cold.

Erik has seen that look before, once, many years ago. He knows what that fear means, the kind of danger it promises Charles and him if Erik didn't do something _right now_ –

The man is standing up over his bike, hands up and shaking his head with wide eyes. He is saying something, but Erik can't understand him over the roaring in his ears. Erik takes a few steps forward, and whatever the look on his face is, it seems to break the man's nerve. Suddenly he wheels the bike around and jumps on the pedals.

“ _No_.”

Erik's got his hand up and the man's barely biked three feet when the frame is ripped backwards. His knees collide hard with the handlebars as his body is thrown forward, and he lands face down in the dust.

Erik stalks forward, flings the bike to the side with a cursory flick of his hand. As he approaches the shifting body on the ground, some of his hearing seeps back in. The man is groaning. And crying.

“Please,” he says as he flinchingly rolls over on to his back. “Please. I'm not – I won't say _anything_ , I swear, I'll leave you alone, don't hurt me, _please –_ ”

But all Erik can see behind the pleas is the suspicion and hysterical, instinctual hatred. He's almost preternaturally calm in the knowledge of what he must do, as if the lack of options was saving him from the agony of guilt.

“I'm sorry,” he says, cold steel in his voice. The man's expression collapses, all remaining rational thought vacating from behind his eyes. Erik raises his hand again, having already totaled and categorized the metal on the man – the pen in his pocket, the fillings in his teeth, the zipper on his jacket, so easily turned into a garrote –

“Erik, no!”

Charles.

_Erik, we're okay, we're safe, you don't need to do this._

_Charles?_

Erik's hand drops, and he looks around. The man is forgotten on the ground in favor of Charles rolling across the yard towards him. Erik can feel him in his head, and he doesn't know what to say. It's been so long.

So he doesn't speak.

 _He saw me, he knows._ Erik stares down at Charles. Charles knows Erik's past, he knows the danger discovery poses.

Charles meets his eyes with a measure of strange desperation. _I'll take care of it._ Then he turns without another word, puts his fingers to his temple, and just _looks_ at the man on the ground.

In the space of several seconds the man's whimpers fade to nothing, his face goes blank, and then he blinks and looks around in slight confusion. The confusion turns to embarrassment as he looks up them again. There isn't a trace of fear or suspicion to be seen.

“Oh god, I'm real sorry – I don't know how I managed that. To just come barreling down your lane, disrupting your Sunday afternoon with my dumbass self...” He keeps nattering away as he gets up and dusts himself off. Erik watches in equal parts amazement and lingering dislike. The thought that his entire world could be threatened by an oblivious stranger in red spandex was really more than he could tolerate.

The man picks his bike up and starts to wheel it back over to the road. Charles rolls alongside, chatting pleasantly as the man checks his gears and helmet and mounts. Erik remains silent but turns to watch Charles, extremely aware that he is still nestled in Erik's mind, a warm and solid presence.

They watch somberly as the man throws a hand up in a final wave and bikes off. He crests the hill and is gone within a minute.

Charles pivots his chair and looks over at Erik, eyes clear through the hangover and very blue. He looks calm enough, but he doesn't bother to hide from Erik how his mind is roiling just under the surface.

It hits Erik again in a shattering force just how close they just came to complete catastrophe. Breathing hard and fast like he'd just ran a marathon, he closes his eyes. The adrenaline starts to seep from him, leaving exhaustion in its wake.

A light touch on his hand and his eyes fly open. Charles is closer, right in front of him, and he looks worried.

“It's fine, Erik, we're safe,” he says, and it's not the reassuring words so much as the faint mental caress that accompanies them that sends him to his knees. Charles's eyebrows jump slightly, and he grabs Erik's shoulders in a tight embrace. Despite the calm he is trying to project, Erik can feel the worry and lingering anxiety underneath Charles's words. He'd been in the house when he felt the twin emotions of fear spike from the yard; he'd almost rolled himself down the stairs in his haste to get to Erik, to save him, to stop him.

They sit like that for a while, there in their green yard, with their house and their life all around them.

Eventually Charles shifts, and Erik can feel him _leaving_ , can feel his withdrawal from Erik's head like he is emptying out. Everything in Erik screams _no!_ and throws itself forward, grasping for Charles to stay.

Charles stills and then he pulls his body back to look at Erik with a knitted brow. His eyes search Erik's face intently.

“Erik?”

Erik knows that there is no natural limit on misery, no point at which things cannot always get worse. Unhappiness is as constant as the ocean, rolling its smaller waves in and out until enough force builds up to produce something that does real damage. And right now Erik feels _pummeled_ , heart-bruised and weary. That was too much of a close call.

“Why do you always keep yourself away?” He says, voice ragged. He doesn't look up at Charles's face, can't, so he just stares hard instead at his own hands cupping Charles's knees.

Charles reaches up and spends a few moments brushing a hand through Erik's hair, a soft reassuring touch. Then it takes on a sudden edge as he firmly grips the back of Erik's head. “You took yourself away first,” he says quietly. “Erik – you just stopped talking to me. How was I supposed to do anything when you wouldn't _talk_ to me?”

Erik opens his mouth but stalls out. There is just _nothing_ there, an inverse presence that nevertheless pushes hard at the back of his teeth like if he dared let go for an instant he'd start screaming and never stop. He shakes his head and rocks forward over Charles's lap, blindly pressing his face into his stomach.

Charles's hand atop his head starts shaking.

“I – I just _can't_ , Charles, I can't, I'm sorry – ”

Erik flexes his hands, skin rubbing against the scratchy fabric of the ridiculous wool trousers Charles insists on wearing. He fists the fabric tightly, feeling the too-thin line of Charles's legs, and shudders, still, with the knowledge that that physical feeling is all one-sided now. He presses his face more tightly in.

“I feel like I'm going mad, sometimes.” He says, voice muffled. It didn't matter, he can tell Charles is _listening,_ finally.

_Sometimes I feel like a ghost, like maybe I died in the accident._

Erik shakes his head, but doesn't know how to verbalize his rejection of that idea. He throws all his emotions, his vehement denials, at Charles, who seems to sort of mentally come apart at the seams in one big rush.

_Erik, you're all I've got –_

“You're all I want,” Erik says, finally looking up.

Charles smiles sadly. _You're all I've got, and most days I don't feel like I even have you. It's like I'm just standing there –_ and here Charles breaks off in a humorless snort of laughter. ... _Well, that right there is part of the problem, isn't it. I can't stand._

“We were having problems before the accident,” Erik reminds him. His heart is aching, but it is a different sort of ache now. Lighter with every new minute that Charles looks at him directly, speaks to him directly. “I know it's been hard, I know it's been fucking awful, but that damn accident didn't change how I feel about you.”

_Might have been easier if it had._

“Don't say that. Charles,” Erik raises himself up on his knees so he is more on the level. _I'd rather be miserable in our house together than be okay and apart._

“That – that doesn't even make _sense_ ,” Charles says, shaking his head somewhat helplessly, the way he's always done whenever he thinks Erik's being too extreme. “And you shouldn't talk like that, it's not _healthy_.”

Erik reaches out and clasps the back of Charles's neck, using his grip to draw Charles forward and press their foreheads together. _You're wrong, Charles._ “It does make sense, because it's us.”

He hasn't been this close to Charles's lips in months, and it's making him dizzy, distracted. He glances from his lips to his eyes, swallowing. _Charles,_ he begins, tight and desperate.

Charles slips forward and kisses him, mouth immediately opening hot and slick over his. _You're insane_ , Charles says to him.

He replies only by burying his hands in Charles's hair and kissing bruisingly back. As he moves his mouth along that beloved neck, he feels the hard pulse of Charles's heart in his throat, and it's like every beat reels back those waves of unhappiness a little more.

Erik presses Charles down into the grass, covering his body with his own and watching for that red mouth to go slack, for the glimpse of white teeth as he laughs his release up into the afternoon sky.

It is a reprieve.

They'll catch their breath and rebuild, and it'll be better this time, it will. They'll even start to hope again, hope that this time it will last, because people never learn.

 

Fin.


End file.
